Jackie McLean / Tina Brooks - Street Singer
Released - 1980
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 1, 1960
Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Kenny Drew, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.
tk.3 Melonae's Dance
tk.5 Appointment In Ghana
tk.6 Medina
tk.11 Isle Of Java
tk.12 Street Singer
tk.15 A Ballad For Doll
Track Listing
| Side One | ||
| Title | Author | Recording Date |
| Melonae's Dance | Jackie McLean | September 1 1960 |
| Appointment in Ghana | Jackie McLean | September 1 1960 |
| Medina | Tina Brooks | September 1 1960 |
| Side Two | ||
| Isle of Java | Tina Brooks | September 1 1960 |
| Street Singer | Tina Brooks | September 1 1960 |
| A Ballad for Doll | Jackie McLean | September 1 1960 |
Liner Notes
On April 17, 1960, Jackie McLean went into Rudy Van Gelder's studio for Blue Note with Blue Mitchell, Walter Bishop, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor. The result was Capuchin Swing.
That session must have pleased all concerned because Blue Note brought the same ensemble (with the exception of Kenny Drew in place of Bishop) back on September 1 under the leadership of both McLean and Tina Brooks. It is that session, presented in its entirety and in order of recording, that makes up with album.
Melonae's Dance, Appointment in Ghana, Isle of Java and A Ballad For Doll were led by McLean, who solos first on each and who composed three of the tunes. Melonae's Dance remained unissued, while the other three titles appeared on the album Jackie's Bag.
Street Singer and Medina, both unissued until now, were led by Tina Brooks. This same group without McLean was brought back into the studio on October 20. Street Singer and four of the tunes from the October quintet session were to be issued as Back To The Tracks by Brooks. For whatever reasons, the album never made it to final release.
Harold "Tina" Brooks and Jackie McLean were closely associated during this period. Brooks was Jackie's understudy in the play the Connection, which incorporated a jazz quartet under the leadership of Freddie Redd into the action on the stage. Both saxophonists were on Redd's Shades of Redd album, recorded on August 13, 1960 and on another, yet unissued Redd session for Blue Note from January 1961.
Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on June 7, 1932, Tina Brooks (whose nickname comes from 'tiny' or 'teeny' which indicated his stature) moved to the Bronx with his family at the age of 13. His older brother played saxophone and inspired Tina to start playing in high school. He moved from C Melody to alto and finally to tenor saxophone. In the late forties and early fifties, Tina gigged with the R & B bands of trumpeter Joe Morris, pianist Sonny Thompson, Amos Milburn and Charles Brown among others. In the mid fifties, he was in Lionel Hampton's band. But he finally left the road to gig near his own neighborhood in New York.
At the Club Blue Morocco in the Bronx, he worked with trumpeter Benny Harris, who became a tutor of sorts, educating the saxophonist to the complexities and harmonies of modern jazz. It was Harris who also recommended Brooks to Alfred Lion.
Almost all of Brooks' work in documented by his few session for Blue Note. in 1958, he participated in an all-star Jimmy Smith date that produced the albums Houseparty, The Sermon and Confirmation. He was also on the Kenny Burrell session that was issued in two volumes as Blue Lights and on Burrell's On View At The Five Spot. He played on and wrote two tunes for Freddie Hubbard's first album and was on the aforementioned Freddie Redd sessions.
His only venture outside of the Blue Note label was a Howard McGhee album of Freddie Redd's music for The Connection, which was only issued in England on the Felsted label.
As a leader, Brooks recorded four albums between March 1958 and March 1961, but only the second date True Blue was ever issued. From March 16 1958, there exists his first date with Lee Morgan, Sonny Clark, Doug Watkins ad Art Taylor. From October 20, 1960 is the aforementioned session with Mitchell, Drew, Chambers and Art Taylor. Finally, from March 2, 1961 comes a date with Johny Coles, Drew, Wilbur Ware and Philly Joe Jones. Hopefully, these three remaining albums as well as the Freddie Redd album will someday come to light. Brooks' output was entirely too small as it is to see great music with in the vaults.
Brooks died in the late sixties when jazz was forgotten and when Tina was forgotten by jazz. His playing and visibility in the community of musicians who lived in the Bronx influenced many younger players, who were coming up in the neighborhood. Barry Altschul and Charles Tolliver, to name just two, remember the saxophonist's encouragement and inspiration.
Influenced by Lester Young, Hank Mobley and early Sonny Rollins, Tina was basically his own man. His ideas were at once original and perfectly logical in development. His phrasing was unique and implied an inate sense of structure. He had the ability to draw the listener into his own thought patterns and flow of ideas. He never wasted a note, and, for all his R & B experience, he never grandstanded to camouflage a lack of ideas. He could take a solo anywhere and have it be as sensible as it was orthodox.
As a composer and small group arranger, he was equally unique and special. His compositions never fell back on riffs in place of a true melody and never relied heavily on the common chord progressions and structures. His tunes are significant, different and immediately captivating and memorable.
Jackie McLean's story and his stature as one of jazz' great artists is well known from countless articles and liner notes over the years and from his chapter in A.B. Spellman's superb book Black Music: Four Lives in The Be-Bop business.
Blue Mitchell, who had become well known to Blue Note fans through his work with Lou Donaldson and Horace Silver, was, along with Paul Chambers and Art Taylor, on Jackie's previous session Capuchin Swing. That came about from a Monday night Birdland jam session at which McLean and Mitchell found themselves together as the front line.
The trumpeter, who died of bone cancer in June, 1979, became an increasingly familiar Blue Note regular. Upon leaving Horace Silver in early 1964, he secured his own contract with the label. By the end of the sixties, his recording were becoming increasingly compromising and commercial, but in live performance, he was at the top of his form. In his final years, he co-led a Los Angeles-based group with Harold Land. The made a superb album Mapenzi on Concord Jazz.
Paul Chambers was the solid, but supple backbone of the great Miles Davis quintets and sextets from 1955 until 1961 and a frequent contributor to Blue Note sessions until his death in January, 1969. He was the bassist for three of the four Jackie McLean Blue Note albums that led up to this one. As a soloist, he was known chiefly for his arco work, but his two solos here on Isle Of Java and Street Singer and pizzicato.
Art Taylor and Kenny Drew, also Blue Note regulars, grew up in the same neighborhood as Jackie. And the three often played together as teenagers. Both moved to Europe in the sixties, where they still live in a more respectful and relaxed environment than their homeland could over give them.
Drew's comping throughout this set is especially vital and inspirational as he feeds the soloists and maintains the interesting structures of the material at hand. A.T. is consistent and musical, generating the proceedings with his non-stop Blackeyesque hi-hat.
The album is sequenced in the actual order in which the tunes were recorded. The opening Melonae's Dance, one of several compositions which McLean titles after his daughter, an AABA tune with an especially fine bridge. The melody is played by the trumpet with the saxes playing section parts. McLean leaps right into his solo with characteristic fire, building three solid choruses. As for Drew's comping, check him out behind the altoists on the first bridge in the first chorus. Mitchell, Brooks and Drew follow with fine solos. Brooks' figure over the bridge in his second chorus is so surprising that even he sound disoriented for a few bars after.
Appointment in Ghana, one of Jackie's best known tunes, was recorded by the Jazz Crusaders a couple of years later and re-recorded by Jackie in 1978 for the East Wind label. But this first version remains the definitive one. Like Melonae's Dance, it is an AABA structure played with the trumpet taking the melody and with a solo order of alto sax, trumpet, tenor sax and piano. The rhythm section has a deliberate, hypnotic quality that is very much in the tradition of Miles Davis. Kenny drew's a solo is intriguing in its seamless, thoughtful approach.
Medina is an example of Tina Brooks' compositional talent. It is a 40-bar, A-B-B1-B2-A theme, with the trumpet again taking the melody line. Brooks' two choruses are rivoting in their melodic and rhythmic freshness. Although Blue fumbles in his second chorus by going to the A section 8 bars early, he does recover the ball. McLean and Kenny are especially melodic in their solos.
Isle Of Java was composed by Brooks, but released under McLean's name. This must have been intended from the beginning because Jackie is the first soloist. The ensemble shifts roles as the alto tackles the biting lead melody while the trumpet and tenor play a cycle of riffs. The tune itself is unusual and tense in feeling. Leonard Feather described it best as "characterized chiefly by its whole-tome, double augmented basis. The Line itself is simple while the chord structure gives the work its personality." McLean jumps right out of the melody into a blistering solo, followed by Mitchell, Brooks, Drew and Chambers, who all remain true to the non-stop, edgy, vibrant quality of the composition.
Tina Brooks' Street Singer, after the introduction, is a 32 bar theme repeated twice. Brooks again demonstrates an unusually original and well thought out development of his ideas. Blue turns out his finest solo of the date, perhaps because this tune comes closest the sort of material that he liked to play. Jackie plays a surprisingly short, concise, one chorus solo. Drew gives us two and finally Chambers plays one. The roles of the front line are equal here as they play the theme ensemble.
The trumpet lead with saxes backing arrangement returns for McLean's tribute to his wife Dolly, A Ballad For Doll. The only soloist is Kenny Drew, whose approach to the tune is dense, chordal and dramatic.
Jackie McLean told Leonard Feather at the time of this session, "It was the first time I had written anything for three horns. That was a challenge for me, because I didn't have much musical education and most of what I know about writing I found out for myself." It is also more than likely that his tenure with the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop had an effect on his unusual writing abilities.
Tina Brooks, too, was basically self-taught and credited Benny Harris for most of his on the job training. Nonetheless, each of these artists possessed the imagination and creativity to compose enduring and interesting piece on which to play; talent can be nurtured but not taught. And the three horn configuration seemed to inspire both men to take advantage of the situation in terms of the material and the arrangements, which are anything but stock three horn unison ensembles.
As improvisers, they were two of the freshest and strongest on the scene. It is incredible that McLean was and is so underrated and Brooks is so completely forgotten. No one ever sounded like McLean; his tone and attack are biting and impassioned; his phraseology, although rooted in be-bop, evolved into its own sphere. He plays with an intense, exacting conviction that could and has made lightweight listeners uncomfortable. As Art Taylor told Ira Gitler after the Capuchin Swing date, "There's nothing flighty about Jackie's playing. He plays hard and to the point. And talk about soul - that's real soul, none of that imitation jive."
Brook's playing on the surface is not as penetrating. Like Warne Haruh or Hank Mobley, his is a style that is endlessly inventive and absorbing once the listener makes the effort to focus on it.
Perhaps it is because the public at large doesn't put in any effort in listengin to music, that great music of all cultures remains the passion of a select few. Certainly, the small amount of energy required will being the listener many riches in return. Bobby Hutcherson once told me that he would worry about the quality of his music if he started selling millions of records, since mediocrity is what ultimately reaches the masses. I don't know if I buy that pessimistic thesis, but it seems to reflect the reality of today. The fate of someone so brilliant as Tina Brooks and the travails of someone so brilliant as Jackie McLean are reminders of the sad price that artists have to pay for that reality.
Michael Cuscuna
